It’s been 32 years since the last great filmic adaptation of Bram Stoker’s seminal novel. But, in the early days of silent film, German director F.W. Murnau made an unauthorized and unofficial adaptation of Dracula, changing the names of the characters and locations, only to be sued by Stoker’s widow and court-ordered to destroy all copies of the film. Thankfully, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror survived, allowing it to become the classic of German expressionism that has cast its indelible shadow over the 102 years of film history since.
Those familiar with the Dracula story will recognize its touchstones, but Robert Eggers is remaking Murnau’s 1922 film specifically, character names and all, thus many of the known rules and lore may or may not apply. In his fourth feature, Eggers makes a welcome return to the distaff gothic horror of his first, The VVitch. You can tell he has honed his craft; the film opens with Depp’s Ellen Hutter invoking the dark lord, beseeching him to take her in the garden as the camera pans up to frame a cloud-covered estate awash in blue moonglow, haunting and beautiful.
This marks the first departure of Eggers’ Nosferatu from its source. Ellen is not only the object of Count Orlok’s desire, but also the film’s protagonist. She is set to marry (ACCORDING TO A FILM SUMMARY, SHE’S ALREADY MARRIED TO) Thomas Hutter (Hoult), begging him not to leave on a journey to meet the mysterious Count. As is a common theme throughout, Ellen’s pleadings are not heeded. Hutter makes the ill-omened trek to the Count’s castle that Dracula fans have seen interpreted countless times, and though his dealings with the Count are not my personal favorite (see this review’s first sentence), there’s no denying the effectiveness of Eggers’ vision. Hutter’s meeting with Count Orlok is perhaps the most terrifying, the most dreamlike iteration put to film.
The second huge departure from the source material is Count Orlok’s character design. No longer the pale, bald, needle-toothed imp, Eggers’ Orlok is the hulking, skulking corpse of Vlad the Impaler, a bold decision that works even as the classic design is missed. What Orlok might sound like is more of a tabula rasa, and Skarsgård’s interpretation is slow and wheezing, resonant and growling, the sound of a corpse dragging air into his rotting lungs to talk, to borrow a description from a friend.
The film casts a spell in its first half. Just as Count Orlok is less a man than a poisonous presence, a shadow plague, disorientating and confusing, like a malevolent fog of nuclear fallout, Eggers ensorcels us in his vibrantly monochromatic dark fairy tale. But somewhere in the third act, it becomes oppressive, struggling to hold together under the weight of the tale it wants to tell and its remaining devotion to its source. Eggers is nothing if not admirably ambitious, and though I do not think it’s the best version of Stoker’s story (that honor goes to Coppola, if the hints weren’t obvious), it’s a film well worthy of the name Nosferatu.
